De Blasio's landslide victory suggests that a new kind of progressive politics
is what voters are looking for, writes Stewart Wood.

Bill de Blasio’s landslide victory in the New York City mayoral race means the Big Apple now has a Democrat Mayor for the first time in 20 years. But de Blasio is not your usual kind of Democrat. He was an unfancied candidate, who came from the lower half of the pack of Democrat contenders to win stunning victories in both the primary and mayoral elections. And his victory suggests that a different kind of progressive politics can capture the imagination of a public ground down by economic crisis.

De Blasio’s campaign was a continuation of the values and policies he has been pushing for 10 years – first as a New York City Councillor, then as the City’s Public Advocate. In that period he championed the cause of the City’s marginalised communities. His campaign to stop landlord discrimination against poorer tenants culminated in the launch of a “New York’s Worst Landlords” watchlist. He led the resistance to axing housing vouchers for poorer New Yorkers. And he was outspoken in the wake of the transformative “Citizens United” Supreme Court case that America should wake up to the way in which corporate money was hijacking US elections.

When he declared his candidacy for Mayor in January 2013, he was not on anyone’s shortlist of possible winners. But de Blasio ran a very different (and very brilliant) campaign – progressive, populist, wearing values with pride rather than sheepishly, and audaciously arguing that New York should build a different kind of future for itself.

His campaign was based on three simple elements. First, the overriding priority must be to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that affects not just poorer New Yorkers but the vast majority of its residents. He attacked sweetheart deals with the City’s real estate companies, and the failure of New York’s business elite to respond to New York’s “affordability crisis”.

Second, he put inequality at the centre of public debate, and argued that New York could not succeed economically by leaving ordinary families behind. His campaign slogan reflected this Disraelian theme: “One New York, Rising Together.” He lambasted the notion that New York’s prosperity depended first and foremost on generating stratospheric wealth on Wall Street. And he unashamedly argued for taxes on the very wealthy to fund pre-school and after-school programmes in the city’s public schools. “We cannot expect prosperity to trickle down from the top,” he said. “We cannot resign ourselves to the mindset that says rising inequality is a necessary byproduct of urban success.”

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Third, he conducted a campaign that was populist – not just in policy pledges, but in character. As the Daily News said in its endorsement of his candidacy, “De Blasio will arrive in City Hall with a mandate to ease the punishing cost of living, having convinced vast numbers of New Yorkers that he is on their side.” De Blasio convinced people that he could challenge the traditional way of doing politics and running the city because he had spent the run-up to his campaign on their side – arguing the case for those who felt politics could do nothing about their lives – and was prepared to take on orthodoxies that politicians on all sides thought were un-take-on-able.

Of course New York City is not the UK, and a mayoral race is not the same as a British general election. But the overlaps between de Blasio’s campaign and the themes being developed by Labour under Ed Miliband have struck many an observer. What de Blasio tapped into was a sense that the conventional notions of how to succeed are being revised by voters in countries like the USA and UK, where the connection between economic growth and real prosperity for ordinary families has broken down. And he won by being bold enough to run a campaign that caught up with where voters were (wealthy and not-so-wealthy alike), and defying those who said “it can’t be done”.

The hard work of governing begins now for de Blasio, and he will have to govern in prose rather than poetry. But he arrives in office with a unique coalition across a City too often known for its divisions rather than its unity, with a mandate for change and for bringing his City together to succeed in a very different way. I wish him well.